Journalist / Author / Lecturer

Tag Archives: American Federation of Musicians

The American Federation of Musicians, particularly its Local 47 and its Recording Musicians Association conference, has been struggling for years to lure recording work back to L.A.; much of it is now done off-shore, especially in London and other European cities, primarily because of the union’s insistence on residuals for studio musicians. Its latest tactic is now before the California legislature in the form of tax credits offered to films made overseas and low-budget independent productions. I explore this plan in a story for Variety; and followed it up a few days later with a report about a music-filled rally the union staged downtown in front of City Hall.

I have been writing about the steady decline of work for L.A.’s studio musicians for 15 years. Back in 2000, I covered the issue at length in the Los Angeles Times. Film-scoring work has continued to plummet, as documented in a recent “white paper” partially funded by the American Federation of Musicians. In this new story for Variety, I look at this very divisive issue and the reasons that, according to one veteran player, musicians are “at each other’s throats” about whether to give up residual payments in order to retrieve the recording work that increasingly goes to London or Eastern Europe.

This week, I reported on two issues involving the American Federation of Musicians, which is the union representing all professional musicians (including those who record film, TV and game music, a subject I’ve studied and reported on for more than two decades).

The AFM has threatened a leading game composer, Austin Wintory (Journey) with a $50,000 and potential expulsion for recording a game score under non-union auspices. Wintory went public with his situation on Monday. Wintory found that game publishers would not use the existing AFM game-music contract and felt he had no choice.

Two days later, the AFM announced a new game contract, hammered out after months of negotiations with Microsoft Corporation. The contract will be available to all game publishers, although some game composers remain skeptical about whether others (in addition to Microsoft) will use it. It’s been a thorny issue for years, among studio musicians and their union reps, as seen in this story from six years ago.

The AFM has become increasingly critical of studios who make movies in the U.S. but go overseas to score them because it’s cheaper. Today they launched a new campaign to call wider public attention to the issue.

One of the most contentious, and complex, issues facing Hollywood studio musicians is the role that the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) plays in their lives. If a movie production company or studio isn’t legally bound to score in Hollywood (only major studios and networks are), then they often choose to go overseas to record their music. A growing number of musicians are unhappy about this, and many are urging the AFM to agree to concessions in order to keep more recording work in L.A. This story reports what many had to say at a meeting in Santa Monica in late 2012. (The headline, incidentally, is misleading; it’s not so much about the composers but rather about the musicians who play the music.) And here’s a followup story from January 2013 on the issue.

This was one of the longest, most complicated, and yet important, stories I ever wrote for the L.A. Times: A 3,300-word examination of why studio musicians were losing work to non-union sites in the U.S. and abroad. Although written 17 years ago, it’s uncannily relevant today, as film-scoring work is leaving L.A. in droves and panic is setting in about how to stop it.

For the Record chronicles the struggle of recording musicians — that is, professional musicians who play in studios (for films, TV, records, etc.) for a living — to achieve respect within their own union environment.

Ignored, even ostracized, by members of the American Federation of Musicians in the 1940s and ’50s, they eventually formed their own union (the Musicians Guild of America, 1958-61), then rejoined a chastised AFM. The struggle didn’t end there, however, and the founding of the Recording Musicians Association in 1969 was a first step toward professional musicians’ eventual acquisition of the power and prestige that they enjoy today within the AFM.